Murder On The Orient Express is like a walking, talking Vanity Fair portfolio

Let’s begin with the moustache. Hercule Poirot’s upper-lip décor had a life of its own in Agatha Christie’s books, an ever-present sidekick both projecting and reflecting his character. Its first mention, in 1920’s The Mysterious Affair At Styles, was as a "very stiff and military" piece of facial furniture, eventually evolving into "enormous" in 1934’s Murder On The Orient Express, involuntarily soaked in soup. Later, as he aged, other characters remarked on its "suspiciously black" tones. But appearances had to be kept – Poirot’s moustache was his calling card, the legend incarnate. It spoke for him.

In his new adaptation of Murder On The Orient Express, director Kenneth Branagh, starring as Poirot, takes that "enormous" and runs with it. It’s a beautiful beast, dominating his face, verging on majestic, but also inescapably ridiculous. The film itself suffers a similar schizophrenia. Appropriately in thrall to another era, it sometimes feels like a Wes Anderson relative, while sounding like David Lean, and is effective only in small doses.

Branagh has breezy fun with Poirot, the famous know-it-all on a break but corralled into solving a murder, here played as a sort of obsessive-compulsive superhero. After someone gets bumped in the night, everyone’s a suspect, and the cast, counting Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz and Willem Dafoe among others, make this as much as a who’s who as a whodunnit. To be fair, Branagh’s at least as much in love with the train as he is his actors – the film is in constant motion, the swooping, swirling camera always on the move to seductive effect, the set a sumptuous fairground.

That all-star cast, though, only takes us so far. Everyone looks fabulous – it’s like a walking, talking Vanity Fair portfolio – but, possibly knowingly, the film feels like a pop-up book, a feature-length OK Go music video. Even the poster looks like a Hollywood advent calendar, and what we’re left with is a superficially sweet yet unfulfilling confection. They’re a dazzling bunch, all perfectly cast, all very easy on the eye, and there’s joy to be had in seeing Dench and Olivia Colman palling around, or Depp relatively dialling it down. Pfeiffer is particularly great in a role previously played by Lauren Bacall, and her performance seems to nod in that direction: Pfeiffer burning up the screen, with glamour to spare – coupled with her turn in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, 2017 seems to have heralded a comeback, and Branagh gets the best from her.

But none of them get much to do other than endure Poirot’s interrogations. Finally, it is saved by Agatha Christie herself – you certainly can’t quibble with the source material – and as things fall apart and come together, the cast get to actually emote. Yet it hardly stirs the heart, at least not as much as you feel it should have done. The ending quite bluntly teases a further instalment, which wouldn’t be unwelcome. It just needs to have a little more faith in itself.